


Services Rendered

by epkitty



Series: What We Do [1]
Category: Tin Man (2007)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Het, M/M, Prostitution, Sacrifice, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-01
Updated: 2011-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-16 00:49:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epkitty/pseuds/epkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How did Cain come up with twenty platinums to pay off the fortuneteller?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Services Rendered

**Author's Note:**

> Darkfic. There are themes of non-con, though there is no rape. Some heterosexual content and references to other non-consensual situations.

The travelers sat round a table at a seedy pavement café under the shadow of a useless awning.

D.G. nursed a weak tea while Toto cowered between her feet, begging crumbs from Raw, who nibbled at a dry biscuit. Glitch had eaten a cookie and had a glass of milk, both of which disappeared in record time, while Cain had nothing at all. Aside from Toto, who rested under D.G.’s chair, they all eyed their gathered funds assembled in four piles on the table. From D.G., there was a useless twenty-dollar bill, three pennies, and a traffic ticket. From Raw, a large copper coin engraved with the likeness of a lion, the likes of which Cain claimed never to have seen before and judged as worth very little in the Realm of the Unwanted. From Cain himself, there were two little platinum slips, the remainder of his generosity after feeding them. From Glitch, there was an unsurprising hoard of useless things: a yo-yo, two paperclips, five bottle caps, a spotted feather, a varied collection of buttons, a shoelace (green), a pen that didn’t work, four hairpins, and a handful of nuts, nails, washers, and a small screwdriver. He also had half a slip of platinum.

When Cain had demanded that Toto ‘cough it up,’ the little beast had cocked its head, barked as though to say ‘I’ve been in jail for fifteen years, moron,’ and lay down at D.G.’s feet.

“This sucks,” D.G. said, stirring the last of her tea, eyes drifting toward a sword-swallower in the street. “Where are we gonna come up with twenty platinums?”

Cain tiredly rubbed at his eyes and glared at their nearly useless pile of resources. “It’s all right. I know a guy.”

= = = = =

After a great deal of debate, Cain had managed to abandon Raw, D.G., and Toto at the café with a multiplicity of instructions on what to do if they were recognized. D.G., however, would not let Cain go off alone, on the premise of something horrible happening and having no one there to help, so Glitch had volunteered to go with him, and Cain was regretting the whole sordid mess as – after a great deal of inquiry and threats –he approached a wagon not unlike DeMilo’s, but considerably smaller and less violently colored.

One side of the truck was open, displaying a huge variety of wares. On the street, the vendor had set up an array of high counters upon which he leaned with a bored look upon a wide face. The face with its single eyebrow lit up upon sight of his patrons.

“That ain’t never Wyatt-fuckin’-Cain…” the pudgy man said, straightening up.

“In the flesh, Don.”

“And your fine associate?” Don asked, eyeing Glitch’s zipper.

“Hi! I’m Glitch—”

Cain smacked his partner and got to the point. “I need 20p and I need it fast.”

Don glanced over his beefy shoulder at a loose tarp that concealed something under the truck. “Tomorror-fast?”

“This-afternoon-fast.”

“So steal it.”

“C’mon, Don. Who walks around with 20p in their pockets down here without protection? You tell me where there’s an open safe and I’m gone.”

“Nah. T’steal it, you’d have to take someone down.”

“I’m not killing for 20p, Don.”

“So a contract would be out then…” The trader looked over his shoulder. “There’s merchandise needs deliverin’,” he said, rubbing his coarse beard.

Cain glimpsed the tarnished tanks that showed from beneath the ratty tarp.

“I don’t touch drugs, Don. You know that.”

“Yeah, I do, and after drugs and death, you know the next best thing that sells down here.”

Cain blinked. “Sex.”

“Mm. I hear you ain’t gotta wife no more, so—”

“You want a skull packed full o’lead, feel free to finish that sentence,” Cain growled, the muzzle of his pistol stamping at the center of the man’s one, long eyebrow.

Don held up his hands in surrender, but showed no real fear. “Look, I’m on’y sayin’, what you got to sell, side from yerself? Nothing to feel guilty about, if’n ya need the money. There’s a Madame down round Green Specs Alley, got a taste fer men who’ll do what they’re told. You’ll get 20p easy.”

At this, Cain gradually lowered the gun.  
 Don resumed his intimate lean upon the greasy counter. “It’s a scrap o’ purple paint by the name of Arby Lounge. Password’s ‘elphaba.’ Ask fer Ms. Low. Tell’m you’re in a hurry and that I sent ya, should get you in quick.”

Cain holstered his gun and stalked away, eyes hidden beneath the low brim of his hat.

After a moment, Glitch surged after him, tripping over his own feet in his haste.

“Whatta you say, Glitch? Coming to the whorehouse or heading back?”

“We’re partners!” Glitch said happily, and with a finality that settled the matter, though Cain wondered how much of the conversation Glitch had followed.

= = = = =

The Arby Lounge turned out to be the “R.B.” Lounge, a narrow stack of stories squashed between a corrugated iron warehouse and an apartment complex of questionable reputation.

At one point, the front of the R.B. Lounge had been painted a garish purple, which had since peeled away and been plastered over with flyers advertising half-naked girls and shows with titles like “Cunt-ry Cabaret” and “Little Gurrls Lost.”

The gold-painted letters that spelled out the name of the whorehouse were tarnished and uneven.

When Cain halted before the place, Glitch asked, “Second thoughts?”

This prompted the man to stalk forward and knock on the narrow door, muttering, “Haven’t had first thoughts yet…”

A rectangular peep-flap flipped open, revealing vivid eyes rimmed in black eyeliner and lashes curled with mascara. Purple glitter weighed down the eyelids. The young man’s voice issued forth. “Password?”

“Elphaba,” Cain said. “Don recommended the place, and I’m in a hurry.”

“Customer or custom?” the voice asked.

After a pause, Cain growled, “Custom.”

The eyes twitched to Glitch and back to Cain before the flap closed and the sound of a bolt being pulled. The door creaked open.

Cain braced himself before stepping inside, followed by Glitch who – as the door closed behind him – chirped, “Hey! This looks familiar!”

The young greeter was dressed in a black kilt and little else and escorted them to a small parlor of dark woods and low lighting. “Please wait here.”

When their escort left, Cain whispered, “You been here before?”

“You know, I think I have…”

Cain observed Glitch curiously as the headcase studied the room, walking its perimeter, feeling the dark-paneled coffering, and pulling out a chair from a desk to sit down and fiddle with a paperweight. “Hm,” he said, befuddled.

Before Cain thought to ask another question, a door different from the one they’d come in opened and the young man beckoned them. “Ms. Low will see you now. Leave your hat and coats here, and your gun – if you please – and come this way.”

His skin crawling, Cain obeyed, setting everything carefully on a side table while Glitch fought his way out of his tattered frockcoat and left it in a pile on the floor.

They followed the rent boy through a hallway so dim they could make out none of its features except for a door here or there until they reached an open room, long and tall, but again so dark that their guide must have had the layout memorized to lead them so unerringly to the light.

The light was the center of the room where a bright, white spotlight illuminated a perfect circle on the floor.

“Come in, come in,” a woman’s voice invited. “Come into the light, gentlemen, so I can see you.”

Set to quivering at the sound of that voice, Glitch’s breath grew harsh as he followed Cain. The pair stepped bravely into the light, squinting after the extended exposure to darkness.

“I am Ms. Low and this is my refuge. What brings you to my humble abode?” The voice was cunning, and laughter from many throats in the darkness followed the pronouncement.

“We need twenty platinums,” Cain said, “and we need it quick.”

“Ah. A business deal. Easily arranged.”

As their eyes adjusted, forms began to separate from the darkness. There were people out there watching them, people in masks and fine clothes, or wearing hardly anything, sitting at café tables or lounging on couches. People lined the balcony and sipped from tall champagne flutes as they held up opera glasses, the better to see the entertainment in the spotlight.

Cain’s eyes narrowed as he watched a form come toward him in the darkness. The woman stood just without the halo of light, and the leaking luminescence showed her to be an older woman with fading ginger hair and lips painted a bright, unruly red. Her dress was crimson – silk and lace – and her smile showed teeth like bone.

Glitch shivered violently at the sight and shifted closer to Cain.

The woman reached into the light to caress Glitch’s cheek with her red-nailed talon.

“Why, Glitch! What a surprise. You tried so hard to get away, and here you are, stumbling right back in again.” The woman winked at him before turning her attention to his companion. “Who’s your friend?”

Glitch shook his head, which Cain took as a sign to keep silent.

“No answer? Hm. No need. I know a Tin Man when I see one.”

She turned her back on them and resumed her seat in a large purple-padded chair.

“Take off your vest and shirt, Mr. Tin Man, let me have a look.”

Cain suppressed his insolence, disrobing in a clinical, unhurried manner, revealing skin tan and scarred.

She twirled her finger in the air, ruby lips thoughtfully pursed.

Cain obediently spun in place, teeth grit tight.

“Very nice. Tell me, what are you doing wandering our realm below with a tattered headcase?”

Cain debated his answer, aiming for something simple and uninformative. “Just helping some friends.”

“Friends who need twenty platinums. And here with Glitch in tow: mere chance. Ah, chance, there’s no such thing. Tell me about him, Glitch, about this Tin Man you brought here.”

“I-- I didn’t. I--”

“Tell me.”

Glitch met Cain’s cool gaze. “He’s a good man.”

She laughed, low and warbling. “A good man. Honey, I’ve spent my whole life looking for one of those. Trust me, there’s no such thing.” She stood and stepped into the light then, circling them. Her skin was pale as a blind man’s eyes, like many who dwelt below, and her curving fingers brought to mind a vulture’s talons. She felt Cain’s biceps and ass as a farmer tests a colt’s legs, and he shied away on impulse.

She circled round and stopped in front of Glitch, pulling him close in a lazy spider’s embrace. “My little rag doll. Why did you run away? Don’t you like me?”

“I like you j-just fine, Ma’am.”

She smiled. There was nothing kind in the expression. In fact, Cain thought, it was very much the look of one who has forgotten kindness entirely.

“My brainless sweetheart,” she crooned, petting his dreaded curls. “Kiss me the way you used to.”

Glitch nervously licked his lips and looked to Cain, who stared back. Cain depended on a façade devoid of emotions, for fear of showing the wrong ones.

Glitch bit his lip until he couldn’t stand the silence and the unrelenting looks. He kissed Ms. Low at the corner of her mouth and grazed his lips over hers. Then he kissed her deeply until she took over, taking everything she could from the meeting of mouths until Glitch struggled for breath and had to fight his own revulsion to keep from pulling away.

“Hm, that’s my boy,” she crooned, reluctantly drawing away to regard Cain once more. “Glitch was one of mine, once. But I take it he’s yours now.”

Cain’s expression was questioning.

“I mean, you’re a Tin Man. You call him a friend. I don’t suppose you’ll let me keep him.”

Cain couldn’t help throwing a glance Glitch’s way. The pale face pleaded with him.

“No, ma’am.”

“As I suspected. You’re so predictable, you Tin Men,” she sighed, pivoting like a dancer. She resumed her seat in the shadows, beckoning a lean young man to sit at her feet, where she ran gold-ringed fingers through the blonde hair. “I have a deal for you then. I’ll let you both go from me without obligation, and since I am a generous woman – as I’m sure Glitch could tell you – I’ll give you thirty platinums…”

“For what, exactly?”

“For services rendered. I want you to make love to Glitch. Here – where we can all see. That’s it. Simple, really.” Her attention shifted. “You understand that, don’t you, Glitch? Glitch understands simple things,” she informed Cain, reveling in the horror he could not quite keep from his face.

Glitch shuffled closer, huddling at Cain’s side. “It’s all right with me,” he said with a hesitant smile.

Still wrapping his head around the prospect and the sudden revelation of a corner of Glitch’s past, Cain couldn’t quite bring himself to make an answer – or a decision.

Glitch’s long fingers subtly wound about his naked elbow. “For D.G.,” the headcase said. “In fact,” Glitch added, his voice a whisper only for Cain’s ears, “Low said she’d let us go if we did; she didn’t say what she’d do if we didn’t.”

A mix of terror and disgust at the situation, at the woman in the dark, at the gritty cabaret, had Cain’s stomach knotted tight. But a surprising thing happened when he turned to see Glitch peering closely at him. The dark eyes held fear, yes, but fear tempered with courage, calmness, and a surety Cain found suddenly lacking in himself.

‘Strength’ was a word Cain was applying to Glitch more and more often, when – days before – he wouldn’t have considered it. “You lead this time,” Cain muttered, bending his head close as though to reassure, but when Glitch smiled gently and tightened his grip, Cain knew it was the other way around.

“All right,” Glitch agreed. He reached down to Cain’s belt, but before he pulled the leather through the buckle, he turned to the Madame. “It’s a deal.”

A cheer came up from the crowd gathering in the darkness. Music – something hasty and pulsing – throbbed through the air, even vibrated through the floor.

Two unclad men pushed a simple bed on wheels into the widening spotlight and locked it in place.

Cain’s eyes darted here and there, hysteria only a step away, and ominous laughter reached through the raucous music to rumble in his ears.

“Look at me,” Glitch said. “Look at me. Look at me.”

Cain did; he looked at Glitch’s face, pale with dark eyes framed by wild hair, and a smile so devastatingly sad, Cain found the place around him growing ever more distant, creating a world made only of light and darkness, the music and his own heartbeat, the bed and Glitch and himself.

He didn’t realize Glitch had begun until Cain’s belt was on the floor and his trousers were half-undone.

All the close calls of his life were etched in Cain’s skin: the scabbed bite from the Papay, the bruise that bloomed green and purple and yellow from Zero’s gunshot. Others, older still, had their place. A thin, pale line cut across his collarbone in a diagonal swipe. Mottled brown and white bars from a fire’s grate were burned into his back. The Tin Man’s tattoo – a black axe – curled around his bicep.

Glitch, who was only familiar with Cain’s body in the gloomy shadows of DeMilo’s truck, took the time to reverently touch and acknowledge each one, even down to his knuckles, which still bore the signs of a man buried alive who had fought viciously to free himself.

Impatient, the crowd began to turn against them, booing and hissing.

“Kiss me,” Glitch nervously prompted, “pretend you like it.”

Cain cautiously brought his hand up to cradle Glitch’s head in preparation to bring their lips together. Ice blue eyes closed when he tilted his head and pressed his mouth to Glitch’s.

Like fighting, this seemed to come naturally to Glitch. His kiss was not passionate, but sweet, even as he pretended otherwise, curling into Cain’s nude body and caressing the skin drawn tight over solid muscle.

Glitch broke away and sighed out, tilting Cain’s head downward so he could put his lips to Cain’s ear. “Bite my neck.”

Cain obeyed the whispered instructions like a perfect Tin Man.

“Take off my shirt.”

Once Cain pushed away all thought and allowed Glitch’s voice to be his sole concern, he found the task less unpleasant than he thought it should have been. He peeled Glitch’s clothes away until he was pale and naked.

Glitch’s body, too, displayed the sign of a long life lived in a short time. Scratches and bruises aplenty he bore from recent days, and scars from what appeared to be operations other than the one that had stolen his brain.

How much of a man can they take away, Cain wondered, before he is no longer a man?

Worst of all perhaps was the code branded on his forearm that had until now remained concealed under layers of shirts and long, shabby cuffs. Distracted by all this white flesh, Cain didn’t realize how long he’d been staring.

“Push me down on the bed,” Glitch hissed.

When Cain held Glitch’s thin, wiry biceps and hesitated, the headcase whispered, “Just do it. Now.”

Cain pushed.

Glitch bounced and beckoned Cain toward him in a motion meant to be alluring and almost was.

Feeling strangely exposed without Glitch beside him, Cain prowled onto the bed, climbing over Glitch and laying down atop him until they were flush together, skin tan and pale and cold.

“Can you get it up?” Glitch muttered.

Cain bowed his head to Glitch’s ear. “I don’t know,” he whispered, beginning to undulate as Glitch held his ass to guide him.

“Do you trust me?”

Cain nodded before realizing the answer himself.

“Close your eyes.”

Glitch pushed at Cain’s tough shoulder until the Tin Man lay on his back and Glitch slithered over him and kissed him and he closed his ice blue eyes.

When D.G. had hugged Cain that first time, he had frozen, overwhelmed at such touch after years without anything but a hardened suit of metal to meet his fingers.

And now this.

Music – harsh and clanging – drummed in his ears, black-red filled his close-eyed vision, and Glitch’s caffeine-nerved fingers were everywhere.

Then his mouth…

Cain thrust up into wet heat and cried out in a savage whine as he creased the red ragged sheets under his hands. In his mind, he suddenly found himself begging for forgiveness, but from who or what he did not know. Glitch massaged his thigh and swallowed him deeply.

Through his panting loss of logic, Cain reached down to gently tug a hank of Glitch’s hair. “S’enough,” he warned. Cain shook from the sudden stimulation, almost palsied. Glitch accepted something from a hand that reached out from the darkness and pressed the tube into Cain’s quaking hand. “Can you do this part?”

“Think so,” Cain muttered, finally past his shock as he watched Glitch kneel upon the bed and then bow down until his head touched the mattress, presenting his skinny ass with spread knees in a pose he seemed far too familiar with.  
 Even then, Cain couldn’t cry, and he stilled the shakes as he laid a warm palm on Glitch’s lower back as though to calm a nervous horse.

Cain ignored Glitch’s limp penis as he focused on unscrewing the cap and filling his upturned palm with the viscous oil. He’d never done this before, but he thought he could figure it out, and after tossing the tube back to the shadows, he slicked a finger and gently probed the puckered rosebud that had undoubtedly promised pleasure to many men. He tapped it gently, as though requesting entrance. He circled the opening until a tiny shift backwards encouraged the finger to breach him.

Cain proceeded carefully, inserting the finger as far as it would go, taking Glitch’s subtle clues about when to go further, push harder, add more.

Glitch pushed the cycle as fast as he could, and he begged prettily for it, for the spectators’ sake, his voice almost breaking. “That’s it, Tin Man, hurry. Fuck me.”

Cain slicked himself with the oil, mixing with Glitch’s saliva on his cock.

Like an animal, Cain crawled over him, fitting front to back, and mounted him slowly, pushing the blunt head into the stretched opening that still seemed too small.

Cain rocked slow and shallow, hating how tense Glitch was, how good it made him feel, and how absolutely horrible.

He thrust without thought and tried to come quickly.

For Cain, it was – absurdly – not intimate enough. He barely knew this man, so wild and fierce and free, so trusting, and he was fucking him and he couldn’t see the damn man’s face.

Cain eased out and found Glitch malleable as the rag doll Low accused him of being, boneless and willing. With the slightest push, Cain turned him to his back.

Glitch raised one leg in invitation and Cain shifted forward. The leg curled around his waist, the other bent up away near Glitch’s chest. Cain slipped inside the loosened channel, staring into Glitch’s eyes until the man blushed from the intense regard.

Cain looked at nothing else, only the deep wells of Glitch’s wide eyes, no doubt blinded by the sun-bright light from above.

One arm braced straight against the mattress, Cain found his rhythm and his balance together so he could slide his free hand down Glitch’s torso, brushing the jumbled path of bruises and scars, flicking a nipple on the way until his hand – still greasy from the oil – snuck around Glitch’s cock, long and lean like the man himself, encouraging him to hardness.

Glitch worked then, angling hips this way and that until he huffed in heathen need and surged forward and back to Cain’s tempo. He hardened in the newly-callused hand and thin lips suggested a smile.

Cain returned the expression not with his mouth, but with his eyes, a quick glance away and then back, remarkably softer.

Something between them changed; they surged toward one another now, working to an end different from the one they had anticipated.

Cain, who had kept himself above and distant, finally bent his elbow so they lay flush together, so they could kiss their strange and crazy kisses, two men who needed a few bucks to help some girl find a home.

A lousy twenty platinums to give up so much to one another.

Cain held back the groan that was so eager to escape, though Glitch whined piteously and arched his pale neck to the light. They grinded together, they heaved and kissed – Cain trailed sloppy, open-mouthed kisses up the tempting neck and his eyes watered. It must have been the light, the heat, Cain thought; they weren’t tears.

They came, Glitch first, his spasms milking Cain’s orgasm from him inexorably and in the end Cain roared, loud and angry and complete.

They collapsed, cold and wet and sticky.

Polite applause filled the room and a pouch landed with a clank on the bed beside them.

Cain, catching his breath, picked it up and pulled the drawstring open to examine the slips of platinum within. He closed it, withdrew from the wilting body beneath him, and slipped from the bed to pull on the clothes Glitch had left here and there, half in the darkness. He dressed quickly and hooked the pouch to his belt and nodded to the figure in the darkness.

When Glitch rolled awkwardly from the red bed, Cain caught him, and helped the headcase pull on his rags.

The spotlight dimmed, his vision went fuzzy and the young man with purple eyelids gently pushed him in the direction of the exit. Cain went more than willingly, making sure his hold on Glitch’s hand was firm.

Hands in the dark reached out, pawing and eager. Glitch pulled away. They called to him, these faceless voices, reminding him of times gone by, and won’t he come join them in the darkness?

Cain pulled Glitch close, wrapping an arm around him and hustling him out of the club room and down the hallway and through the waiting room and out the door and into the street and away from the Lounge on Green Specs Alley.

= = = = =

“You got the money?” D.G. asked, turning her innocent blue eyes up to him.

“Yeah,” Cain said, covertly passing over the bag, “we got the money.”

He looked at Glitch, but for once the headcase was silent, and he would not look up from the ground.

= = = = =

The End


End file.
